Cogent input

Thu Jun 11 14:08:19 UTC 2009

Overall I can't say cogent has been bad.  They have been great with
support and getting things completed.  As far as outages go, maintenance
here and there but they always give ample time via email on planned
outages.  Their network has improved a lot over the years and most
customers can't tell if they are on cogent or Level3 for the most part.
But as with every network no one single carrier will get the job done
"the best".  I can't think of the last.. unexpected outage we had in our
POP with cogent.  Overall recommended carrier now a days.

Cost in terms of performance, you can get competitive rates from Level3
and a chunk of the tier2's out there that will go lower than cogents
standard pricing model.  Most seem to be in the same ball park +-1/Mbps.

Zachary A. Thompson

-----Original Message-----
From: Bret Clark [mailto:bclark at spectraaccess.com] 
Sent: Thursday, June 11, 2009 10:17 AM
To: NANOG
Subject: Re: Cogent input

I hate when these questions get asked, because as the saying goes..."a
person happy with a service will only tell one other person, but a
person unhappy with a service with tell ten other people".  So I think a
lot of times you'll get skewed responses...but with that said, we've
been using Cogent now for a year and no complaints at all. Had some
minor downtime back in April due to a hardware failure, but Cogent
responded extremely quickly, scheduled an emergency maintainance and had
us  running rather quickly. Face it, hardware problems happen so I can't
blame Cogent on the failure. The few times I've dealt with their tech
support group I found 99% of them very knowledgeable and I know that
when we initially turned on the link they went the extra mile to resolve
some initial problems during the weekend time frame. 

My 2 cents and with any provider mileage will vary,
Bret

On Thu, 2009-06-11 at 15:01 +0100, Andrew Mulholland wrote:

> At $JOB-1 we used Cogent.
> 
> Lots of horror stories had been heard about them.
> 
> We didn't have such problems.
> 
> Had nx1Gig from them.
> 
> On the few occasions where we had some slight issues, I was happy to
> be able to get through to some one useful on the phone quickly, and
> not play pass the parcel with call centre operatives.
> 
> 
> and at least in the quantities we were buying they were significantly
> better value than others, which was the primary reason we went with
> them.
> 
> 
> 
> andrew
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 2:55 PM, Paul
Stewart<pstewart at nexicomgroup.net> wrote:
> > Our experience with them was at least one major (longer than an
hour)
> > outages PER MONTH and many of those times they were black holing our
> > routes in their network which was the most damaging aspect.  The
outages
> > were one thing but when our routes still somehow managed to get
> > advertised in their network (even though our BGP session was down)
that
> > really created issues.  I have heard from some nearby folks who
still
> > have service that it's gotten better, but we are also in the
"regional
> > offering" when it comes to IP Transit and have sold connections to
many
> > former Cogent customers who were fed up and left.
> >
> > I have found with Cogent that you will get a LOT of varying opinions
on
> > them - there are several other players (at least in our market) that
are
> > priced very similar now and have a better history behind them.....
> >
> > The specific de-peering issues never effected us much due to enough
> > diversity in our upstreams and a fair amount of direct/public
peering...
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Paul
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Justin Shore [mailto:justin at justinshore.com]
> > Sent: Thursday, June 11, 2009 9:47 AM
> > To: NANOG
> > Subject: Cogent input
> >
> > I'm in search of some information about Cogent, it's past, present
and
> > future.  I've heard bits and pieces about Cogent's past over the
years
> > but by no means have I actively been keeping up.
> >
> > I'm aware of some (regular?) depeering issues.  The NANOG archives
have
> > given me some additional insight into that (recurring?) problem.
The
> > reasoning behind the depeering events is a bit fuzzy though.  I
would be
> >
> > interested in people's opinion on whether or not they should be
consider
> >
> > for upstream service based on this particular issue.  Are there any
> > reasonable mitigation measures available to Cogent downstreams if
> > (when?) Cogent were to be depeered again?  My understanding is that
at
> > least on previous depeering occasion, the depeering partner simply
> > null-routed all prefixes being received via Cogent, creating a
blackhole
> >
> > essentially.  I also recall reading that this meant that prefixes
being
> > advertised and received by the depeering partner from other peers
would
> > still end up in the blackhole.  The only solution I would see to
this
> > problem would be to shut down the BGP session with Cogent and rely
on a
> > 2nd upstream.  Are there any other possible steps for mitigation in
a
> > depeering event?
> >
> > I also know that their bandwidth is extremely cheap.  This of course
> > creates an issue for technical folks when trying to justify other
> > upstream options that cost significantly more but also don't have a
> > damaging history of getting depeered.
> >
> > Does Cogent still have an issue with depeering?  Are there any
> > reasonable mitigation measures or should a downstream customer do
any
> > thing in particular to ready themselves for a depeering event?  Does
> > their low cost outweigh the risks?  What are the specific risks?
> >
> > Thanks
> >  Justin
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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> >
> >
> 